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Music Notation Software

First of all, let's just say flat out that our first recommendation is MusEdit. MusEdit has three outstanding virtues which make it worth recommending:
  1. Modest cost: $79 USD, last time we checked.
  2. Written by a guitarist, for guitarists.
  3. Professional grade printed notation output.
Besides these primary factors, MusEdit has lots of other capacities:
  • MIDI
  • TAB
  • Automatic translation between TAB and Staff Notation
  • Automatic transposition
  • Full scores of up to 20 instruments
  • Written by an old-school programmer: small program size, small file sizes.
  • Exports graphics files (.png and .bmp) for use in other programs or on the web.
  • Many special details only guitarists would appreciate, like various Tablature tunings, etc.
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Does MusEdit have any disadvantages?

Well, MusEdit is a keyboard user's program. Although there are a very few things that you can do only with the mouse, or better, most of the program tools, commands and inputs are accessed most quickly and easily by typing the keyboard shortcuts. If you are a good typist, and can remember a hit parade of basic important keystrokes, you can enter musical data very quickly with MusEdit. If you must do everything with the mouse because of your personal working preferences, you will find MusEdit to be painfully slow. However, when you want to find a capability or command for the first time, or use a function that you rarely access, then all of MusEdit's tools are easily accessible with the mouse through the menu or through one of the many toolboxes which may be placed on the screen around your main work area, similarly to the toolboxes in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

MusEdit runs only on a PC under Windows. (We have not tested it with Wine under Linux.) If you are a Mac user, we don't yet have a recommendation for a suitable alternative in MusEdit's price range.

What are some more of MusEdit's virtues?

MusEdit is very flexible. You, the user, have a great deal of control over the printed output. The printed output is completely scalable, allowing you to control the balance between getting a complete chart on one or two pages and making the print size convenient to read at any distance. You can set the length of any staff line. Text boxes placed on a staff line make it possible to use symbols from any font installed on your system if you don't like the default symbols included in MusEdit's library. For instance, you may use the Boxmark font (see our Music Fonts Page) to create large colored rehearsal letters, or any music font to create large colored signs (as in "D.S. al Coda", etc.), fermatas, repeat signs, etc. — all those things you do with a highlighter or a magic marker on those vanilla looking charts printed with other programs.

We did an interview with MusEdit programmer Doug Rogers some time back. Read the interview...

What about other software packages?

Well, the big boys are Finale and Sibelius. They are great programs, their only drawback is that they also cost big bucks. If you have the dough, don't hesitate.

What about other low-cost software packages?

We only have direct experience with two. Tabledit is very popular, but only with people who don't read music. Tabledit's staff notation output is almost laughably ugly and primitive, and for anyone who wants to maintain a professional image, as represented by the music charts they hand out, Tabledit is not the way to go. However, it is a very popular program and must have some desirable features, because it's very popular.

We have also used PrintMusic, which is a low-cost offering from Finale. Naturally PrintMusic is a quality program and gives high quality printed output, but it is quite limited because they want you to buy the big program as soon as you get frustrated with it. It offers no flexibility in page layout, and among other annoyances you cannot even open a file without specifying an instrument, which will be printed ("GUITAR" duh!) in front of the first stave. The chord symbols are of fixed size and very small - big disadvantage right there - and in general it is more annoying for its limitations than useful for printed output. Its advantages are that it is easy to learn and easy to use with the mouse. However, these are very small compensation for its drawbacks.


Last page update 05-16-08